Girl, interrupted

Friday 25 March 2005 19.32 EST
First published on Friday 25 March 2005 19.32 EST

The author: Thomas Hardy (1840-1928) was born and brought up in Dorset, where he trained as an architect. After a spell working in London in the 1860s, he returned to Dorset and began writing seriously. His first novel, The Poor Man and the Lady (now lost), was accepted by a publisher in 1868, but Hardy did not go ahead with it. Desperate Remedies became his publishing debut in 1871, with his fourth novel, Far From the Madding Crowd (1874) his first significant success. Increasing acclaim brought financial reward and status. Hardy's prolific output reached a high point in the late 1880s and early 1890s: The Mayor of Casterbridge, Tess of the d'Urbervilles and Jude the Obscure.

The story: Rejected by magazines for its controversial content, the book initially had a number of passages removed by Hardy to ensure serial publication; he later restored them for a definitive 1912 edition. Tess Durbeyfield is sent by her parents to "claim kin" with the wealthy d'Urberville family. Tess is seduced by her "cousin" Alec d'Urberville and is left with a baby that soon dies. Ashamed, she finds work in another part of the country where she meets and marries the free-thinking but sternly moralistic Angel Clare. Clare, however, abandons her when he finds out about her past. She becomes involved once again with d'Urberville (who has become a preacher after a religious conversion), and agrees to become his mistress. Tess later murders d'Urberville, is hunted down and executed.

The film-maker: Born in France in 1933, Roman Polanski grew up in Poland during the second world war (including a period confined to the Warsaw Ghetto). After film school, he made his directorial debut with Knife in the Water (1962) before heading to the west. A string of increasingly successful films followed, but the murder of his wife Sharon Tate cast a blight over his career. After the release of Chinatown (1974), Polanski was convicted of unlawful sex with a minor and fled the US before sentencing. Polanski found backing for Tess from French actor-director-producer Claude Berri, and the film was shot in northern France. Polanski cast Nastassia Kinski (actor Klaus Kinski's daughter, whom he had met when she was 15) in a role Tate had once planned to play.

How book and film compare: Apart from the inevitable telescoping of events and scenes, the film remained largely faithful to Hardy's narrative. (Significantly, perhaps, Polanski considerably defangs the character of sexual predator Alec d'Urberville, and omits his religious conversion.) The script was written in French, with Polanski's regular collaborator Gérard Brach, then returned to English by John Brownjohn. Brownjohn also had to supply dialogue for scenes that Hardy had glossed over, such as Tess's emotional revelations to Clare.

Inspirations and influences: Polanski said he wanted to recreate the peasant life he had known in the "medieval" Polish countryside as a wartime escapee, and attempts a similar recreation of period agricultural life as Terrence Malick's Days of Heaven (1978), though his stylistic references are more French-influenced (notably the genre painting of Courbet and De la Tour) than American. Tess marked the end of Polanski's major phase: Pirates (1986), was a flop. It was only with The Pianist (2002) that he has regained anything like his former reputation.